Washington’s Blog/Global Research May 20, 2012 By George Washington Attack on the Press You know that the Department of Justice tapped scores of phone lines at the Associated Press. You might have
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Monthly Archives: September 2012

Gottfrid Svartholm will be kept in detention for at least two more weeks on suspicion of hacking into a Swedish IT company connected to the country’s tax authorities. According to Prosecutor Henry Olin the extended detention is needed “to prevent him from having contact with other people.” The Pirate Bay co-founder is not allowed to have visitors and is even being denied access to newspapers and television.

Following his arrest late last month, Pirate Bay co-founder Gottfrid Svartholm was deported from Cambodia to Sweden.

Initially it was assumed that Gottfrid was sent to Sweden because of the outstanding one year prison sentence in the Pirate Bay case. However, once he touched down at Stockholm’s Arlanda Airport, the authorities said he was suspected of being involved in the hacking of Logica, a Swedish IT company that works with the local tax authorities.

CHICAGO (Reuters) – A Cook County judge on Thursday dismissed charges against 92 people arrested last October during two anti-Wall Street Occupy demonstrations in Chicago and said a rarely applied city curfew law violated their constitutional right to free assembly.

Police arrested more than 300 people during the protests for violating a city ordinance when they did not leave a park near Lake Michigan when it closed at 11 p.m. Violation of a city ordinance was the lowest possible misdemeanor charge.

The demonstrations were held in Grant Park, which was the site of large protests against the Vietnam War during the Democratic Party’s convention in Chicago in 1968. The area has been a gathering point since 1835, two years before the city was incorporated.

The demonstrators contended the curfew was unconstitutional because it acted as a blanket bar on all speech and was enforced arbitrarily against them. The city said it was applied regardless of speech and the demonstrators had other avenues in which they could communicate.

SAN FRANCISCO — The University of California has agreed to pay $1 million to settle a lawsuit filed by demonstrators who were pepper-sprayed during an Occupy protest at UC Davis last fall, according to a preliminary settlement filed Wednesday.

The Nov. 18, 2011, incident prompted national outrage, angry campus protests and calls for the resignation of Chancellor Linda Katehi after online videos shot by witnesses went viral.

Images of a police officer casually spraying orange pepper-spray in the faces of nonviolent protesters became a rallying symbol for the Occupy Wall Street movement. The demonstrators had been protesting steep tuition hikes and police brutality.

Under the proposed settlement, UC would pay $30,000 to each of 21 plaintiffs named in the complaint and an additional $250,000 for their attorneys to split.

ATHENS – Police and masked youths clashed in Athens on Wednesday during a nationwide strike in protest at a new round of austerity cuts introduced in return for crucial EU-IMF loans.

Gangs of youths threw firebombs, smashed windows and set fire to garbage on the sidelines of the demonstration near luxury hotels on the capital’s central Syntagma square.

The police responded by firing tear gas and stun grenades to disperse them.

Dozens of people were detained, according to a police source, as crowds moved towards the capital’s other central square, Omonia, booing and throwing plastic bottles at the special forces that were present.

THE US military has designated Julian Assange and WikiLeaks as enemies of the United States – the same legal category as the al-Qaeda terrorist network and the Taliban insurgency.

Declassified US Air Force counter-intelligence documents, released under US freedom-of-information laws, reveal that military personnel who contact WikiLeaks or WikiLeaks supporters may be at risk of being charged with “communicating with the enemy”, a military crime that carries a maximum sentence of death.

The documents, some originally classified “Secret/NoForn” — not releasable to non-US nationals — record a probe by the air force’s Office of Special Investigations into a cyber systems analyst based in Britain who allegedly expressed support for WikiLeaks and attended pro-Assange demonstrations in London.

Civilians are being “terrorised” 24 hours a day by CIA drone attacks that target mainly low-level militants in north-west Pakistan, a report by Stanford and New York Universities says.

It claims that follow-up strikes are also killing rescuers who set out to treat the injured.

The report, made up of interviews with victims, witnesses and experts, pins blame on US President Barack Obama for the recent increase in “signature strikes” which target groups selected through “pattern of life analysis” and which have resulted in large, innocent groups attending weddings and funerals being killed.

MADRID — Spain’s government was hit hard by the country’s financial crisis on multiple fronts Tuesday as protestors enraged with austerity cutbacks and tax hikes clashed with police near Parliament, a separatist-minded region set elections seen as an independence referendum and the nation’s high borrowing costs rose again

More than 1,000 riot police blocked off access to the Parliament building in the heart of Madrid, forcing most protesters to crowd nearby avenues and shutting down traffic at the height of the evening rush hour.

Police used batons to push back some protesters at the front of the march attended by an estimated 6,000 people as tempers flared, and some demonstrators broke down barricades and threw rocks and bottles toward authorities.

LONDON–Russia’s consumer rights watchdog, Rospotrebnadzor, said Tuesday it has suspended the import and use of genetically modified corn made by Monsanto Co. (MON) following a study’s allegations that the crop causes cancer.

Rospotrebnadzor said the country’s Institute of Nutrition has been asked to assess the validity of the study, while the European Commission’s Directorate General for Health & Consumers has also been contacted to explain the European Union’s position.

The study, conducted by the University of Caen in France, alleged that rats fed over a two-year period with the U.S. chemical company’s genetically modified NK603 corn, developed more tumors and other severe diseases than a test group fed with regular corn.

Two U.S. Marines have been charged in connection with a video TMZ posted, showing at least two American soldiers urinating on the corpses of deceased Taliban fighters, TMZ has learned … and the men are also facing allegations involving a grenade launcher.

The USMC tells TMZ, the Marines — Staff Sergeants Joseph W. Chamblin and Edward W. Deptola — have been charged for “violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice” for their involvement in the urination incident.

The USMC says the incident is believed to have taken place during a counter-insurgency operation in Afghanistan on or about July 27th, 2011.

A Houston police officer shot and killed a one-armed, one-legged man in a wheelchair Saturday inside a group home after police say the double amputee threatened the officer and aggressively waved a metal object that turned out to be a pen.

Police spokeswoman Jodi Silva said the man cornered the officer in his wheelchair and was making threats while trying to stab the officer with the pen. At the time, the officer did not know what the metal object was that the man was waving, Silva said.

She said the man came “within inches to a foot” of the officer and did not follow instructions to calm down and remain still.

Here, I will be shedding light on the real issues that we face everyday. Instead of taking sides, I will bring you information that will unite us rather than divide us. Our world today is full of opinionated idiots whose job is to only separate and confuse us. This has brought us to the brink. Media continues to reduce our world to talking points and mindless mantras. If we continue on this path we will be blindly led to our servitude. Let us come together and unite against those that wish to dumb us down and herd us like cattle to the slaughter. So today, I say, "Wake Up, Stand Up, and Be Heard!"